Steps

1

Perfect S.P.E.C.I.A.L. SPECIAL is basically a nickname for the 7 main stats your character has. At the beginning of the game you get to choose your SPECIAL. You get 40 points between them (note: This is the only time you can choose them). The maximum for one stat is 10. The higher the number is, the better the ability is. The 7 skills of Special are strength, perception, endurance, charisma, intelligence, agility, and luck. Every main stat gives your character little boosts in certain skills like Speech or Small Guns. Each of the 7 skills also gives you special abilities.

Strength gives your character the ability of being able to carry more stuff and increases your melee weapon damage (but not your unarmed damage).

Perception gives you the ability to detect enemies from a farther distance on your compass.

Endurance gives your character additional health and determines you natural resistance to radiation and poison, as well as your lung capacity (only useful for diving).

Intelligence gives you more skills points every time you level up than normal. (This is probably the most influential S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stat, as it accelerates the players scaling versus the enemies.)

Agility increases your amount of action points (which are used in V.A.T.S.).

Luck will increase your chances to win a critical hit and it increases your skills by half a point every time you add a point to it.

2

Perfect your skills. Every time you level up you get to distribute a certain amount of points between your 13 skills. Those skills are Small Guns, Big Guns, Energy Weapons, Unarmed, Melee Weapons, Explosives, Medicine, Sneak, Lockpick, Science, Repair, Barter, and Speech. Your SPECIAL stats help increase these skills as well do perks and distributing your points. Skill books (value 50, weight 2) increase a skill by one point (or two points with the right perk), there are ~20-25 skill books of every type in the game, so you can max every skill.

It's recommended that you max skills that fit your playstyle. A heavy armored bruiser, who wants to gun down everything, doesn't need speech, while a speech oriented character probably won't need heavy weaponry.

Science and Lockpicking are normally only used for locked terminals and locks. It's adviced to get multiples of 25 in those skills, as the mini games are locked at 25/50/75/100 skill level (e.g. 74 won't allow you to pick a hard lock, which has the requirement 75).

Skill soft caps that should be met rather sooner than later are Repair 45 and Explosives 30.

Heavy weapons usually don't matter in early game, as high maintenance costs and rare ammunition limit them. It's adviced to skill into small guns, energy weapons (might need merchants to supply the ammo in the early game) or melee.

Barter kind of irrelevant, unless you need money for repairs and ammo. Yet you can easily maintain a higher quality of your gear than merchants could.

3

Perfect your Perks. Each time you level up you get to pick between one perk. As you level up more, more perks become available for your use. Some perks give you increased skills. While some give you the ability to use your words to get members of the opposite sex to do things for you! There's pretty much a perk for everything in the game.

4

Looting. Try not to take too much so you don't become over-encumbered, but if you ever find yourself inside a house remember to take anything useful. This includes things such as:

Stimpacks/medicine/stealth boys

Ammo

Grenades/mines

Weapons (just grab all, and once you get over-encumbered repair your stuff or drop the lowest value ratio)

Cigarettes (single, pack and carton)

Pre-war money and pre-war books

Quest items/files.

Anything weightless or with a value ratio of 25 caps per weight

5

Go exploring. Never just do the main storyline and finish the game as quick as possible. There is no rush, not once are you timed. Just go around and explore. Pick up items. Pick up food. There is much to find in Fallout 3. Fallout games are loved not just because of their storyline but also because of the wide range of activities available.

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Tips

Use perks, S.P.E.C.I.A.L., and skills to make the perfect character.

Every character should have at least 25 in Lockpick, Explosives, and Science. This will let you pick easy locks, hack easy terminals, and disarm and collect landmines. These three things will often save you trouble and increase the amount of loot you find.

As soon as you have 25 in Explosives, or better, consider talking to the sheriff of Megaton and disarming the bomb for him. He rewards you with a house, which is very useful.

Remember to loot all the ammo cases, grenade and mine cases; they can house some helpful things, also first aid cases for Stimpacks, Med-X.

Not rushing through the game is especially important in Fallout 3 as you cannot play the game after the final mission unless you have the Broken Steel add-on downloaded and ready.

Warnings

Some might find a post apocalyptic wasteland kind of disturbing.

This game is rated M. It is full of violence, strong language, drug and alcohol usage, scary images, and blood and gore. If that is offensive, don't buy this game.